Web Search & Marketing Newsletter - November 2012

Welcome to the latest issue of our monthly newsletter, which covers news, tips and advice on effective website marketing techniques and trends.

In the first article this month we take a look at how making the correct choice of keyword matching options in a Google AdWords campaign can result in a much improved ROI.

Next, we examine the features and uses of a LinkedIn Company Page and how this can benefit your business by expanding its online reach and presence through the business-networking environment.

In the final article, we investigate Google’s Data Centres from the virtual access that has recently been granted to these, and assess the technological advances that these are making.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter, either by month or by subject. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page for updates.

On to this month's edition...

Google AdWords Keyword Match Types

The option to use different keyword match types within AdWords is something that all businesses, or managers that run a campaign, should be familiar with. This is because the correct use of these can result in the campaign being more targeted and the budget being spent more precisely. Understanding these differences and choosing the right keyword matching options can dramatically help to improve your return on investment (ROI).

There are settings available within the AdWords interface for each keyword that help to control how closely the keyword needs to match a person's search term in order to trigger your ad. It's possible to choose one or more matching options for a keyword, depending upon how precisely targeted a campaign needs to be. The broader the keyword matching option is, the more traffic potential that keyword has, whereas conversely, the more exact it is, the more specific that keyword will be to someone's search.

So those with the smallest budgets need to be the most tightly controlled from the outset, with exact match keywords. Conversely, those with larger budgets can begin by casting a wider net through the use of more broad keywords and then further refine these in response to how much relevant traffic those generate. However, broad match does need to be used carefully to ensure accurate and relevant targeting of searchers.

There are four keyword matching options available:

the negative match type ensures that your ad doesn't show for any search that includes that term. This helps to prevent wasted expenditure on irrelevant keywords;

the positives that do allow the ad to be shown, range from broad to exact in the following order of least closely matched to most closely: broad (and broad match modifier); phrase and exact.

If you don't specify a particular matching option, keywords are automatically considered to be broad match. (You can find more details about these keyword matching options here, or here. You can see more information about the difference between regular broad and modified broad matches here).

In addition to these specific keyword match types, when using the phrase and exact versions, Google provides the option to choose if those should include plurals, misspellings and other close variants. This setting is selected by default, so if the campaign is to be focused upon showing the ad when only very closely matched keywords are used, it's necessary to change this to exclude those variants.

Through on-going keyword match type refinement, a well-managed AdWords campaign should evolve into a precisely targeted one, leading to a more focused audience that in turn results in better quality leads and enquiries and an improved ROI.

If you'd like more information on how the Web Marketing Workshop can help to improve your ROI through keyword match types, contact us now for further information.

Using LinkedIn Company Pages

In this article we examine the benefits, features and uses of a company page on LinkedIn. This is a topic which should interest companies that are keen to discover how the use of this business networking website can deliver tremendous reach to business professionals and organisations, for a relatively small investment.

LinkedIn is useful for companies’ recruiting, business networking, development, and research. A company page is a centralised location where millions of LinkedIn members can go, to stay informed on company news, products and services, business opportunities and job openings.

It's relatively straight-forward to create a company profile, with a company logo and weblink. A recent addition has been the option to add a larger image for the business page, in a similar way to Facebook or Google+. It’s then very important to ensure that the page is regularly maintained and stays up to date. Many larger organisations assign a LinkedIn Administrator to look after their profile as part of their social media activity.

The profile includes an overview of your company and key company statistics that can be used to promote your services and products, which can attract leads and opportunities. As it’s a communication and information exchange that’s based on expertise and resources, it provides the benefit of being able to create business relationships with those in similar, or other industries. Creating or joining groups facilitates this as these act as forums for members to have real-world conversations about products, issues, opportunities, events, and referrals of information.

The company profile is accessible from each company employee’s individual profile. So every employee you have on LinkedIn will give you the opportunity to promote your company. Also, each company profile has an area to post careers, so this can replace a traditional job board and expand the company’s reach via its network by posting vacancies on LinkedIn.

Another useful feature of a company profile is that it can be used as a hub for the employees to receive latest news and updated information, such as organisational changes, or promotions. It’s also possible to create posts about forthcoming events, such as tradeshows, conferences, and training seminars.

LinkedIn company pages can be viewed by anyone, whether they’re signed up for LinkedIn or not, or whether they’re following the page or not. The page can be connected to Social Links, such as Facebook, Twitter and your blog’s RSS feed can automatically update the page. A strong company presence will let LinkedIn users follow your company and its updates.

Ensuring that your customers and clients know that they can find you on social media sites will help them to constantly stay up to date about projects that you are working on and advances with your business. Fans of the company page can like, share and comment on the page’s updates, which can be highly effective at increasing the online reach of a company.

This is where you can find out more about LinkedIn Company Pages, or contact us now if you’d like details about how we can promote your company’s online presence through LinkedIn.

Google Data Centres

Google recently released an inside look into its data centres for the first time. Up until then they have kept their sites under close guard, which according to them, is in the interests of protecting the security and privacy of "your" data that they hold.

Other opinions indicate that the primary reason for this is that Google still views its data centre empire as one of its most important advantages over the online competition, and it’s determined to keep the latest technology hidden from rivals. So, not surprisingly, the peek that they provide of "where the Internet lives" gives no technical details away.

You can take a streetview walk through a Google data centre in North Carolina here, or watch a video of the streetview here.

These data centres (also known as Googlenet) are widely regarded as the most advanced operation on the web, but there's still much that isn't disclosed, including exactly how many servers it operates worldwide. It owns six in the U.S. and three in Europe, and four more are under construction (three in Asia and one in South America). But the company declines to say how many other "colocation" data centres it uses, sharing data centre space with other outfits.

Also, it tends to keep its latest technology to itself. Especially, the networking tech used inside its worldwide data centre empire, as Google infrastructure boss Urs Hölzle explains: "we try to be as open as possible — without giving up our competitive advantage... we will communicate the idea, but not the implementation."

What we do know is that because Google designs its own networking equipment and servers, it’s driving a massive shift in the worldwide hardware market. It's believed that Google is now Intel’s fifth largest server chip customer (a clear sign that it's now one of the world’s largest hardware makers), but it contracts with outside manufacturers when it comes time to actually build its machines. It's thought that the company is using a contract manufacturer located in Canada or Mexico, or perhaps South America.

It's also at the forefront of green cooling system development for data centres, which it's designing from the ground up. (Images of this can be seen on Google's Green Blog).
According to Joe Kava, Senior Director, Data Centre Operations "by providing this view into our data centre operations, we hope to inspire other companies to rethink their approaches to data centre cooling. Building our own cooling systems means we can keep our data centres cool using a fraction of the energy used by a typical data centre chiller and that translates to reliable, carbon neutral services you can use for free".

So although Google is still being understandably discreet about the details of its technology, it's apparent that the techniques employed during the development of these data centres are at the cutting-edge of technology.

If you would like to know more about these Data Centres, contact us now.

Follow us on Facebook & Twitter

If you use Facebook or Twitter, you can now follow our news and updates using these channels:

We hope you've found this month's newsletter useful. Please contact us if you need any more information on the items covered, or our advice on any aspect of your website's performance. Also, if there are any issues you would like to see in future editions of this newsletter, please submit your suggestions to us.